OT: Talking Cars Tuesday - Failure Stories
As suggested by http://mgoblog.com/users/umgradmsudad UMGradMSU Dad, let's hear about when your cars have failed you. Blow a tire and ruin the chance of a hot date? Run out of gas when you're trying to break up your ex's wedding (that may have been from a movie)? 
Did you stumble upon a broken down car full of girls in need of some desperate help? Did it go real swell and end up at the Eastside Motel?
Was it your fault? (As an automotive engineer I can guarantee it was either your fault... or the corporate bean counters' fault)
Let's hear when your cars have failed you - or when you failed them (they need gas to work!)
In 2009 I was driving to Michigan for grad school from my hometown in Nevada, I was driving the '96 Sonoma with the two dogs in the back. My wife is driving the 2001 Grand Prix with my Mother-in-Law and 18 month old son, we still argue to this day about who had the worst of the deal.
I was driving on a back highway in Colorado trying to get to Fort Collins(we were meeting friends there and for a stop for the night Fort Collins > Cheyenne) and make our stop for the night and so I decided to push it on gas thinking if it came to it I would just find a gas station off of the highway and call it good. All of a sudden I hear the sputter and the steering wheel starts to lock up on me and so I pull over the side side of the road. I explain to my beyond pissed wife that I have run out of gas and that I would like for her to drive up to the next gas station and fill up the spare gas container(which I had also neglected to fill, I am 0 for 2 in the judgment department at this point). She heads down to the next gas station, about two miles away, which my Mother in Law helpfully pointed out was located at Jackass circle.
To northern Wisconsin for a Nissan video shoot I was producing and the fuel pump went out about a 1/2 hour North of Green Bay. Needless to say, I did not make the shoot in person, but did get an extremely quiet and awkward ride back to Milwaukee with the two driver...oh, and one expensive German car manufacturer bill
There is NOTHING north of Green Bay (from a Civilization standpoint. I've had great times in Northern WI, Black River, Chequamegon hikes, etc.) seems like a rough place to break down.
Gashed my oil pan on a jeep road outside Marble Colorado. The 1996 Outback really had no business being out there period and I had been bottoming out fairly routinely but there was something about the pan impact noise that had me immediately feeling pain and fear in the heart travelling straight up through the gonads.
Mercifully this happened at one of the very, very, very rare spots on the route that had any semblance of a pull-off. Off I went and still sitting in the seat bent over to see my fate...yep a steady stream of black flowed to the ground. No good option for extraction existed so I returned two weeks later, installed a new pan, and continued on my way.
knocking on wood as I type this but I have owned a number of vehicles and have NEVER had a failure. Never ran out of gas, never had a breakdown on the side of the road, never blown a tire while driving. Hell, I have never had a battery die on me . . . though I have been a passanger when all have happened.
That being said, I have totaled 4 cars and am lucky to be alive after a couple of those accidents. Only one of those was my fault and that one involved zero other people, cars or property.
So I'm heading up north to Baldwin from Grand Rapids (Volvo S60) to spend a weekend canoeing and drinking with friends. I buy some beer and throw it in the cooler and am ready to go on a nice summer night in Michigan.
Everything's going just fine until I get a flat tire north of Rockford. Not a huge deal, but always a pain. I put the donut on and drive slowly north.
I get off 131 on the Baldwin exit and head west. Cell phone reception is spotty for me and my friends at the cabin. It's now past 9:30pm and basically dark. I'm driving 55mph on a two lane road and at the bottom of a hill (with a car going towards me in the opposite lane) when I spot the biggest damn raccoon I've ever seen.
I can't swerve (other car) and there's little time to brake. I basically hit the bear raccoon at 50mph and by the time I'm at the top of the hill every damn light in the car is blinking at me. I pull over on a gravel road and get out. Antifreeze is POURING out of the front of my car.
The damn raccoon cracked my radiator. After 45 minutes of sitting there my friend calls me back (finally got my messages) and I had to get the car towed two hours the next day. $2800 in damages.
I drank a lot that weekend and hitched a ride home with friends.
Let's see here.
My old Grand Am had a (rear) tire blow out...just after I had spent all my money on chrome rims. (No, not douchey ones -- the actual same chrome rims off of a Grand Am GT. Actually, my car looked a lot like that...)
At the time I was working a minimum-wage job and couldn't really afford new tires, so I had to beg Daddy for help, or put on my winter tires. He willingly helped and I owed him for a bit.
My "new" car, the Mustang, has just been all manner of adventures.
I took a Lovely Michigan Construction Present (a rather large cone) that had been placed in the middle of an exit ramp right up the middle of my car, and it bent the radiator real bad and did some damage to a couple of plastic parts that I had to replace. Hello, Pony Tax.
The A/C Compressor *literally exploded*. The pulley got dismounted and it was really only held on by the serpentine belt itself. Ugh. And now I'm having issues with the replacement...sigh.
I wet-sanded through the clearcoat (massive clearcoat failure) when trying to (properly) touch-up paint some lovely dings caused by Lovely Michigan Road Presents. Twice.
And most recently, I tried to do a spark plug swap, cracked the #2 plug without realizing it, drove it, and apparently damaged my catylitic converter. *sigh*.
BUT ASIDE FROM ALL THAT I LOVE MY CAR
I lived in Orlando Florida for 3 years with no AC in my car and a 30-40 minute drive each way to work.
I was planning to get it fixed as soon as my move to Maryland was done. But, the weather here is such a relief compared to Orlando, I laughed and sang and said "I guess I won't fix it you wussy Maryland summer".
I may or may not have laughed and sang.
Edit: Please, merciful Gods of Maryland weather, do not torment me for my frivolity.
Had a air cooled '72 Porsche 914 which got it's heat from heat exchangers around the exhaust like old VW Beetles. Bought the car not knowing it was missing the heat exchangers. Drove one A2 winter with no heat, really unpleasant.
I was driving my then old and used 1993 Prizm to my now-wife's parents' house in 2002 and admittedly, I had been ignoring a couple ominous things for a week or so but this date was going to be the one where I actually proposed (and I was still able to do that), so I had put off auto repair until the week after this particular Saturday.
I was probably a half-mile from the house - and fortunately there was no one really around me - when I tapped the brakes to stop at a red light. I was going about 45 MPH at the time, so as you would normally do, I gave myself plenty of room to stop. The problem was this - I didn't stop. Not even a little bit. I blew right by that light at 45 MPH and, as my initial emergency plan was to not touch any pedal at all, slowly decreasing. So, the next thousand feet or so, I touched nothing on the floor, slowed gradually and came to a stop on a dirt verge about 300 feet short of my then-girlfriend's (within moments, fiancee) house.
I walked the remainder of the way. Good thing was that I wasn't even late even at that. After some wrangling with AAA, I did get a tow even on a Saturday in the late afternoon and she went with me, following behind in her car to the shop in Belleville. I was able to leave the keys in the after hours box at Firestone on Belleville Road. To this day, mine is the only proposal that I know of that took place in front of a tire rack outside a body shop.
The rest of this is history, of course.
I was driving to San Miguel de Allende Mexico with my two sisters in a tiny Renault that we rented at the airport. We were traveling about 60 miles an hour on a very narrow two lane road with no shoulder...just a 3 foot drop off into empty fields. All of a sudden the front latch on the hood broke lose and the hood of the car flew open and smashed thru the windshield. Needless to say, driving with the hood open eliminates all visibility. All three of us immediately started screaming as I swerved around and got the car under control. it was like the scene in National Lampoon's Vacation when Clark Griswald wakes up after falling asleep behind the wheel.
We drank lots of Tequila when we got to our hotel.
About 1995-ish, my '76 MGB wouldn't get out of the driveway on a big date night. The convertible had been fine all day, but there was always something going wrong - it was a project, but it was fun.
I had gone on a couple dates so far with a cute MSU girl at home for summer, and she planned a Friday top-down drive to the lake. She wanted to find someplace out of the way where we could be alone, lie under the stars and have some beers and a great night, WOO!
But the damn car wouldn't start up after I parked in her driveway. Had spark, starter cranked, but it wouldn't catch and run. "This has never happened before, but I'm sure it'll just take a minute. I can fix it. We can still make it to the lake by sunset." Famous last words.
Battery was new, plugs were new, wires were all good, coil generated spark. Stumped so far. I was nervous, getting sweaty and sunset was coming fast. I kept going over and over everything I could think of, and time kept running by. She'd gone back inside and brought us drinks... and then another round, and I was missing my chance, and getting angry about it. Fuel filter wasn't plugged, no leaks or smells anywhere. Tried again, kept looking. The sky eventually turned more dark than orange.
She brought me a flashlight and suggested she could drive us for ice-cream or something, but now I was annoyed, angry and short-sighted, more worried about missing work the next day than our wreck of a date - I had to figure out this stupid car problem. She watched me kick the tire a few times out of anger, and went inside to watch tv.
I finally figured out that I couldn't hear the usual fuel pump ticking with the key on - it had to be disconnected, clogged or dead. Mosquitos were eating me to death. One of her girlfriends showed up. Dammit. But she still seemed positive, just maybe some other night.
I finally had to surrender and call my dad to bring a jack, toolbox and bug spray so I could properly get under get it for a while and hope to get it home. Her dad and mine started up a conversation while I was under it. Ugh.
An electrical lead to the fuel pump had come loose. Reconnected that, let the pump go for a minute with the key on, then it started right up. She never went out with me again. Sometimes I think the car was teaching me about trouble-shooting cars, having a jack and toolbox handy, anger/problem management, saving me from a tragic mistake with an MSU girl... or all of that together at once.
Air, fuel, and spark. Need all 3
My failure story unfortunately came with some consequences. We were skipping our last hour study hall to smoke some dope in our buddy's car. It was an 80's buick. I'm not sure what exactly, but a long bodied car with the leather bench seats. We were in a packed parking lot and doing a quick clam bake. Unfortunately i went to crack the window to ash the doob and the window came crashing down off the track. Smoke started billowing out of the car and a cop just happened to be driving through the parking lot. We were busted. That damn buick screwed us.
It was a good thing though because it woke me up to the fact that weed was clouding my judgement and I was making some incredibly horrible decisions. I was young, dumb, and hanging out with the wrong kids. Luckily the school only suspended us and after five days in juve and six months probation I was able to move on with my life without a criminal record. Youth, bravado, fearlessness, and drugs are a dangerous combination. It's a good thing for me that the school and judicial system were understanding.
The Summer of 1979, I was 17. My best friend (next door neighbor) and I both planned to call in sick to work one day. We both worked for our fathers so it was an odd moment telling our dads that we were too sick to work on a nice 90 degree July day. By 10am we were on our way to Grand Haven State Park and feeling much better. First thing we did when we got there was strip down to our shorts and left our wallets and shirts and shoes in the car. Of course we locked the doors to safeguard our treasures, and with them the car keys. We were too stupid to ask anyone for help, did not know what a slimjim was and had less than a buck in change to make a phone call back home. "uhhhh dad, we need keys to the car. were in Grand Haven." Somehow the secretary did not translate too well because it took our fathers sitting around talking after dinner wondering where we were and our mothers chiming in about us grabbing towels befor they figured it out. 8pm my dad arrived with the extra set of keys. Caught by the boss playing hooky, burnt to a crisp was our punishment.
and my trusty farm truck, with me + 3 of my sons, loses it's fuel pump. we coast off the freeway to the bottom of the ramp. guy pulls up with a salvage state police vehicle with push bars and offers to push the truck across the intersection to a shop. what a nice guy - who i give some $ to, though he didn't ask.
long-story-short, we get truck towed to a local place that works on diesels (they didn't end up repairing it). enterprise rental picks us up at the same time. we pay for a small car which they don't have and instead they give me the nicest minivan i ever saw. total delay maybe 1 hour and we make it to family festivities.
end of story is that a buddy of mine owns a tow company and had to be down in flint a few days later. towed it to the shop for me and all i had to do was swap him some eggs from the farm.
1989 Ford Escort. When it worked, I loved that car ...
... but the fuel pump went out every 25K miles like clockwork.
(Ford Motor insisted this was 'normal maintenance' despite my argument that if so, then state the requirement to replace the fuel pump in the scheduled maintenance table.)
It stranded me deep in the back country of eastern Virginia.
Tow truck took me a shithole garage out in the sticks. Banjo music ala "Deliverance" ringing in my ears. 4 hours later I called AAA back and agreed to extra charges to tow me back to civilization (Washington D.C.). New fuel pump installed; a week later the radiator broke; fixed that; then a month later the starter motor.
I got good time out of the car ... when it worked.
1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. I backed hard into a very low retaining wall. Missed the rear bumper and hit the rear differential instead. Pretty good smack but I couldn't see any damage and it drove fine so I cursed, shrugged, and was on my way.
The next day I was going fast around a curve on a country road when I felt the car lift up on the driver's side rear. I looked in my sideview mirror and saw my tire, wheel and axel all about 5 feet left of where they were supposed to be. I was able to keep my now Reliant Robin-esque Olds on three wheels long enough to get it stopped, but holy hell was my heart pounding.
TL;DR: Don't build retaining walls less than 3 feet high.
When I was a rising senior in high school I did the whole college visit thing. About an hour into our drive to South Bend my car blew a tire. Had to call AAA and all that stuff. Missed our scheduled campus tour and all that. I took it as a sign. Thank heavens for that shitty tire.
In 1998, I bought a 1993 Volkswagen Corrado VR6 off the internet. If you don't know the car, it's a fun little hatch back (like a shooting brake), that felt fast and sounded awesome. It did have its share of tyical VW issues, though.
I lived in Philly at the time and the car was in Boston. A few buddies and I drove up to Boston and then drove back. I wasn't great with a manual transmission then, so the first few miles (and first toll booth on the Mass Pike) were a bit of an adventure.
I drove back to Philly, took the car to the local dealer to get my PA inspection. There I learned I had a bad switch for the reverse lights along with some issue with the oil pan. Had those items repaired and figured I was ready to enjoy my very "expensive" ($12.5K) toy.
That night, I was thrilled to be designated driver since it meant I could drive my car. Stopped by my GF house to pick her and her friend up. Car sputtered a bit on the way up a steep hill to her apartment. I assumed it was poor clutch work on my part. Drove back down that big hill, onto the street and then headed up the next big hill in the area. Car just dies. I'm able to get on the shoulder and am just across the street from a gas station. I'm pissed, embarassed, confused at what happened. One of the girls has AAA, so she calls them. Said it would be an hour. Girls call a friend to pick them up and go to the bar. I'll meet them later, if I get the car issue sorted out. As I'm waiting for AAA, I call the VW dealer and leave a nasty message that they must have screwed something up. While still waiting for AAA, I try to start the car, nothing. Then I look at the gas guage with the ignition on. Says I have 3/8 of a tank, but I realize I hadn't filled up since I left Boston. Gas gauge is broken and I'm out of gas. I walk across the street, buy a container of gas and fill up my car and off to the bar.
I parked in an office park garage that we always parked in without any trouble. Of course that night, a towing company decided to stake out the area and towed my car while I was in the bar.
It turned out to be a harbinger of bad things to come for that car. I spent more on repairs in the 10 months that I owned it than I did on loan payments. I was able to sell it for $12K, so ended up fine. I'll never forget that first night with the car.
I had a 1985 Mustang in high school/half of college. Huge piece of shit. One day my mom needed to borrow it for some reason. I got a call a little while after she left. "I just want you to know your car's on fire," she told me. I heard sirens in the background and someone yelling, "lady, get out of the car!" Needless to say, I never really got to say goodbye.
I should've gone down with that thing. I owned it for about five years and lived through everything from the power steering failing mid-turn to a tire blowing on 94 to skidding out around a turn in front of a semi in the rain. The stereo system kicked ass though.
Needless to say, I never really got to say goodbye.Good heavens, I hope you mean to the car.
one helluva way to tell someone about their mom dying.
Had a date and took my Lotus Eclat for some kind of cruise, not Woodward but something else. Alternator took a dump during the drive on the east side of metro Detroit. I know you are surprised an English car had an electrical problem. Limped it as far as I could on battery power before there was not enough power to spark the plugs and power the lights.
Took an embarrassed cab ride home to Farmington Hills. Not sure I saw that girl again.
This is not mine but the body and color is the same.
Riding with my brother when he had a universal joint fail. Some twine later he was able to limp it home. I also was with him when he ran out of gas and used rubbing alcohol to get it home.
This was a gas station fail. I went to get gas in downtown Chicago. The second I pulled out into the busy intersection after filling up, my car died. Of course it was one of those gas only city stations, so there was no tow truck and no person working there other than the cashier. I ended up getting the dealer to tow it. They couldn't find anything wrong until they drained the gas tank and found that I had filled up with water -- the gas station sold me water, not gas. Had to file a formal complaint with the city and the gas company to get them to pay for getting my car back on the road.
My future brother in law, sister, girlfriend, and myself rode in an old 1986 cutlas ciera to Florida. It continued to break down all the way there. As long as we did not turn the engine off it would run. After finally getting to Florida, my future brother in law took it to a mechanic and they could not figure out what was wrong with it.
We nursed it around Florida for the entire week and had many times when we just sat in the car parked on a toll road or a side road not going anywhere. We had a flat tire during the week and when we went to change it there was no jack in the trunk, so my brother in law and myself picked the car up, while my sister put the spare tire on. We brought the blown out tire to the tire shop and found out it had an allen wrench stuck in it.
Anyways, on the way home we decided not to turn the car off for anything (potty breaks, food stops, etc.) We drove the entire way home without turning the car off. It ran constantly for 24 straight hours until we finally made it home.
Years later, my brother in law confessed that the mechanic in Florida said that the car only had like 1 cylinder left and that he would not trust driving the car across town. Well we drove it back to Michigan without turning it off and made it.
Good first car for a teenager? Smart car or maybe a Tacoma standard cab. Don't let them have a backseat.
If they were cutting brake lines they're dumb lawyers. Everyone knows you should use a turkey baster to drain the brake fluid without damaging the vehicle - then the car was just dry, not tampered with.
I mean... wait what?
I drove a Saturn way past its prime for a while. I had a pretty decent job making decent money. But I thought I was "sticking it to the man" by refusing to cave in to convention and driving my old car. So one Saturday night I'm coming home from a wedding reception with a very attractive young woman with me. On Huron Parkway, the car dies. Literally. The girl looks at me and just shakes her head. Luckily this was the early 2000's and I was able call her a cab on a cell phone and get a tow truck to tow me to the now-defunct Saturn dealer on Jackson Road. I just left it there after a friend came to pick me up. Next day, I went car shopping with a friend after the dealer wanted to fix the car for more than its Blue Book value. That Saturn was the last American car I owned.
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Kids today don't know how good they have it with cell phones, more reliable cars, speed limits above 55 mph, no gas rationing. Traveling back in the 70s and early 80s was much more of an adventure than it is now. A buddy and I once broke down out in Utah in about 1980 or so. We decided to head to California, with not much money and almost zero planning. We left Flint around 5 pm and didn't stop until somewhere west of Denver. That part of the trip was pretty uneventful, except I took over driving at about 5 am and about an hour later ethe sun was coming up and we were in a massive traffic jam--Kansas City rush hour. Lesson learned: on road trips try to avoid major cities at rush hour.
The real fun was yet to start. We made it to Grand Junction, CO, and as we headed west started seeing signs saying basically there would be no place to stop for anything for nearly the next 100 miles or so. We filled up with gas, bought some beer, and were good to go. We get about 70 miles into the desert and the car isn't running so well. We slow down and limp along, wondering what the hell we're going to do. The car stalls out and won't restart. We have no good idea how far or close we are to civilization. Get out, open the hood, neither of us knows diddly about cars. Once every 5 minutes or so a car passes by. We wait about 15 minutes,letting the car cool down and wondering who would find our bodies. We tried the car again, and somehow, magically, the car started up. A few miles later we could see signs of a hotel or restaurant in the distance. Then there was this wooomph sound from the engine and we literally coasted into the first parking lot on the outskirts of town, the Motel 6 in Green River Utah, a town that seemed everybody was just passing through. It had hotels, restaurants, gas stations, car parts stores, and repair shops and didn't seem to have a whole lot more.
The timing chain broke and we had lost all the coolant. It was my buddy's car and he ended up trading to the mayor of the town (who also owned a tow truck and repair shop) for a car 10 years older but that ran, and we limped our way back to Michigan, with a few more, lesser adventures.
We stayed a day and a half in Green River, and that was enough. The few young locals we encountered said what they did for fun was go down to "the beach", which was a spot on the river with a rope swing where they would hang out, drink and get high. We did see some beautiful countryside in Utah and Colorado and made it home with some great memories and stories to tell.
took my investigator and my then-fiance (now, mgowife) fly fishing there decades ago. very cool.